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John Easton (1621-1705)
}} Biography * 15th Governor of Colonial Rhode Island (1690-1695) * 8th Deputy Governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (1674-1676) * 3rd, 5th, 7th and 10th Attorney General of Rhode Island John Easton was a political leader in early colonial Rhode Island, devoting decades to public service before eventually becoming governor of the colony. Born in Hampshire, England, he sailed to New England with his widowed father and older brother, settling in Ipswich and Newbury in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. As a supporter of the dissident ministers John Wheelwright (1593-1679) and Anne Hutchinson during the Antinomian Controversy, his father was exiled, and settled in Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island (later called Rhode Island) with many other Hutchinson supporters. Here there was discord among the leaders of the settlement, and his father followed William Coddington to the south end of the island where they established the town of Newport. The younger Easton remained in Newport the remainder of his life, where he became involved in civil affairs before the age of 30. Ultimately serving more than four decades in the public service of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Easton began as an Attorney General for the island towns of Portsmouth and Newport, soon fulfilling the same role for the entire colony. To this line of service he added positions as Commissioner, Deputy, and Assistant, for many years serving simultaneously in multiple roles. In 1674 he was elected to the office of deputy governor, serving for two years, with a part of his tenure being during King Philip's War, about which he published a written treatise. Following the overthrow of the Edmund Andros governorship under the Dominion of New England, Easton was elected as governor of the colony for five consecutive years. While in office his biggest concerns were funding the ongoing war that England was fighting with France, and dealing with the disruptive French privateers. Other issues during his tenure included a smallpox epidemic in Newport, charter issues having to do with Rhode Island's militia serving in other colonies, and the ongoing border line disputes with the neighboring colonies. The son of the Quaker governor, Nicholas Easton, the younger Easton was also a lifelong Quaker, and following his death in 1705 was buried in the Coddington Cemetery in Newport where his father and several other Quaker governors are also interred. Historian Thomas W. Bicknell wrote of Easton, "Governor Easton was one of the best qualified and most efficient of Colonial governors. His knowledge of the history of the Colony was complete, his judicial ability was tempered by long experience and careful study, and his great activity and energy, mental and physical, partook of the quality of men at life's meridian. Weakness in policy or vacillation in opinion found no lodgment in Governor Easton's administration." Early Life The son of Nicholas Easton, a President and Governor of the Rhode Island colony, John Easton was baptized at the parish church of St. Ethelfriede in Romsey, Hampshire, England on 19 December 1624.1 His mother, Mary Kent, died in 1630 in England shortly after the birth and death of her fourth child.2 At the age of nine, in late March 1634, Easton boarded the ship Mary and John at Southampton with his father and his older brother Peter, his only surviving sibling.3 Once in New England, the small Easton family settled first in Ipswich, and then later in Newbury, both in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.4 While in Newbury, Easton's father became an adherent of the dissident ministers John Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson. On 20 November 1637, the elder Easton was one of three Newbury men disarmed for his support of these ministers, and the following March he had license to depart the colony.5 He then went to Winnecunnet, later Hampton, New Hampshire, but was ousted from there as well, and by the end of 1638 he was at Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island in the Narragansett Bay with other followers of Anne Hutchinson Marriage and Family In 1661, Easton married Mehitable Gaunt (or Gant), the daughter of Peter and Lydia Gaunt from nearby Plymouth Colony.7 They had five children and at least 17 grandchildren.7 They had been married less than 13 years when Mehitable died in late 1673, after which Easton married a woman named Alice, but had no children with her.7 Research Notes The ancestry of John Easton's father, Nicholas, was published by Jane Fletcher Fiske in the The New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 2000, and she published the ancestry of Easton's mother, Mary Kent, in the same journal in 2008 and 2009. Vital Records Coddington Cemetery